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Tuesday, 16 August 2016

Back to the hills...

Last night (15/8) Chris Manley and I revisited the old lead mine site at Nant y Bai, Rhandirmwyn. It was not the most productive of visits even though conditions were pretty reasonable in the sheltered `cwm` alongside the stream below the mine area. The spruce-clad high hillside to the south also prevented the light of the moon from reaching the cwm - making it quite dark - but the increasingly wet vegetation was indicative that temperatures were falling and that may have influenced the catch.
I only offer a couple of highlights here but I`m sure that Chris will add some of his offerings to the blog in due course.

Above: a smart male anomalous (an upland species), one of which entered one of my three actinics.

Above: a carpet on the carpet - a striped twin-spot carpet.

Only three records are listed on Sam`s 2013 list but Jon Baker in 2006 states, `...just two of the 164 records are not from the SN74 Rothamsted traps, and 138 of the SN74 records come from the period 1970 to 1975`. He also gives the number of records as 164 for `prior to 2006` and 7 from 1996 to 2005, so there seems to be a discrepancy here! I also recall that I`ve had it at Palycwrt and Llyn y Fan Fach in the last decade. I also think that there is no reason to doubt the SN74 Rothamsted records, unless there are factors that I`m not aware of.

Above: as this is a short blog (I`ve got work to do!), I offer this c 1920s photo of the old lead mine. We trap in the valley that cuts obliquely across the old photo, but further to the west (left in photo).

5 comments:

Striped Twin-spot Carpet has also been recorded on Y Mynydd Du in 2015 and 2016 (SN71) and remains, as Jon remarked, "extremely local and under-recorded." Excellent photos, Ian - particularly that splendid Anomalous (not seen here since 2014).

I've no idea what kind of muddle my 2013 list was in (or whether you have interpreted a column in a way I hadn't intended), but the dataset now holds over 350 records of which the majority are from the Rhandirmwyn and Gwenffrwd RIS traps. Other records are from Pal-y-cwrt, Cennen Ravine, Cwmllwyd, Black Mountain and Llyn y Fan Fach (1 at each site) so it's good to have a record from the lead mine.

Have just double-checked as this is exactly the sort of error I make in a rush. However, it (the 2013 list on the R-hand side of the page) does state only 3 records. Perhaps it is a simple typo, with you starting to type in 3.. (ie three hundred and something) when you compiled the list and got distracted?